Too Poetic: Even for Him
by S.Zix
Summary: And when she finally does see the sky, she will not know that he watches her fall.


**Too Poetic: Even for Him**

When she slinks down the hall—her legs weaving between the side slits of her dress—she does not know that he watches her fall. Fingers flick tight around the handle of a weapon that does not always kill, though he knows she wants it to. He wonders what Vincent Valentine will think when she leaps from the spire without piety or grace. What will Vincent Valentine say to himself when her laughter ruptures the quiet sky because she thinks—she knows—she has won?

That, Genesis Rhapsodus sees, is the point. He will not, cannot care. No one will.

"Rosso the Crimson," Nero wheedles, though Genesis already knows. He sees it splashed across her bodice in patches, raked away by the sound barrier.

"Redundant," Genesis scoffs, though his eyes will not leave her neck, pristine and as yet without the effects of collision. "Excuse me." He bows his head dismissively, gripping his hands into fists tight over both legs, before he rushes down the hall after her. Nero shakes his head. Says nothing.

LOVELESS has shown him futures before, endings unfolding in its pages, but this one does not quite fit. Where went the glorious maiden? The Acts forget her, as the Acts forget Angeal's puppy. But still he sees them both, broken, leaking, and without honor. Compelled, he follows her while she falls.

"You walk so swiftly," he tells her when his eyes fix upon the narrow pin holding her shoulders together. "One might think you have no desire for company."

Her hair tosses the scent of sour tangerines into the dank gear-grease air of Deep Ground. Her lengthy rouge—crimson, so appropriate—curls scatter on her face. She is so ugly except for the grace of her tragedy. Thin long fingers tighten over the dual-pronged blade that Genesis knows her pride does not let her sheathe.

"It's you," she sneers disdainfully, lips curled up to her long thin nose. "The spineless worm."

Last Genesis checked, he had a spine. And last Genesis checked, 'spineless worm' was a trite expression. But Genesis ignores this because he sees her fall while she says it, and the poetry of the drop overbalances anything she can ever voice.

"I prefer to call myself a knower," he tells her instead. Concrete splits. Wind steals away conventional artistry with flecks of dust and shale. He stands beside Vincent Valentine, watching her descent, but neither feel moved by her madness.

She walks away, disgusted by his black buckled finish, his hair, his prose, and the fact that he keeps the rays of morning to himself.

"Wait." Genesis stops her again, but swears it's for the last time.

"What is it exactly that you want?" And Genesis only sees Rosso laugh as she plummets, the concrete block like a promenade: a trophy for the victory she convinces herself is hers.

"The sky is not worth it," is all he thinks to tell her. For a moment, he sees the skin-blistering milk of open day vanish and the constricting walls of Deep Ground return, strangling her, freezing her veins until her blood turns blue instead of red.

"What do you know of worth?" Derisive words whip the picture away, purging its traces with scarlet figures dancing on the sky line. Her bones lose their distinction, broken and cracked between homogenized stones.

"Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul / Pride is lost / Wings stripped away, the end is nigh." He hopes, but she still falls. He tries not to feel relief when he notices that she looks much more beautiful in red.

"I don't care about your pride," she spits. But she does; she just calls it something else. When he looks through the color streaked across the ending, he sees her fly—fly to a world that abhors you and I—and he almost chases her again. The course alters when he shuns the water and the cold ice of waiting in servitude. Instead, he plucks her from the gray sky, drowning his ears in her screeching. He shakes her plastic sharp shoulders and tells her she is too—too poetic: even for him. No one will see her genius when she dies locked inside of it. Because she _is_ trapped in her own construct: more trapped than she is in the moulding once-earth of Deep Ground.

But then he remembers that he has promised twice not to follow her. "Legend shall speak / Of sacrifice at world's end." Regretful words propel him toward the cold stasis that awaits him, away from the poetic contrite soul with no pride but her own. Yet even as he goes, Genesis cannot turn his eyes away from the will-be-never-once-was-glory.

She would hate him for keeping this secret to himself, he knows. But he gave up the luxury of caring in the red glow of something all together less captivating than her narcissism.

As she yearns to conquer the sky—eyes dark and hollow from too long without light—she does not know that he watches her fall.

The one thing Genesis fails to see is the number of times that he will.

-Since I think this one deserves a bit of explanation—according to certain canon authorities, Genesis is taken to Deep Ground where Nero and Weiss ask him to join them, but he declines. I'm sort of assuming he could have run into Rosso at some point. And that's all I'll say. This was inspired largely by ValarSpawn's "Two Shades of Red," which I loved. Everyone should read it.-


End file.
